What Buyers, Sellers Want From Their Agent

What Buyers, Sellers Want From Their Agent

Daily Real Estate News |
Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Consumers want their real estate agent to be tech-savvy and offer lower fees than their competitors, finds a new survey by the real estate brokerage Redfin of nearly 1,000 recent home buyers and sellers.

About 62 percent of buyers and sellers said they are looking for lower fees in a real estate transaction. However, 22 percent of those surveyed said that low fees actually made them worry about the quality of the service.

Buyers and sellers are also taking notice of what technology agents are using to help them on their house hunt or sale. Fifty-seven percent of buyers and sellers surveyed said the technology their real estate agent uses is important to them. On the other hand, 31 percent of consumers surveyed said “the only thing that matters is the quality of the agent.”

Besides low fees and technology, the majority of buyers surveyed also indicated that they valued responsiveness in a real estate agent. In fact, it was the most sought-after trait for an agent among buyers. Forty-seven percent of buyers surveyed rated responsiveness as key — even over professionalism, local expertise, and experience.

Sellers, on the other hand, rated responsiveness as the least important quality to them in a real estate agent. Instead, 44 percent of sellers said “experience selling homes like mine” was the most sought-after trait for them in a real estate agent.

What’s more, nearly half of the sellers surveyed said they had no major gripes about their real estate agent. For those who did, they said they wished their agent would “fight harder” for them or they wished their agent had done a better job with the online marketing of their property.

Sixty-seven percent of buyers said they had no major complaints about their agents. For those who did, their most common responses was wanting their agent to “fight harder” for them as well, followed by a desire for the agent “to be an adviser” to them in the process.